GMR not to bid, GVK to decide later

The GMR group, one of the eight consortia pre-qualified for the Rs 12,132-crore Hyderabad metro rail project, has decided not to participate in the financial bids.

“We will not participate in the bidding,” the company said, adding it had decided to withdraw as its other projects would keep it busy.

Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited (HMRL), the special purpose vehicle formed to implement the project, held a meeting of the pre-qualified bidders on Saturday. GMR and GVK did not attend.

When contacted, GVK Group chief financial officer Issac George said: “All we can say is we are pre-qualified for bidding. We will take a call later. We will drop it if we think the project is unviable. But there is a lot of time to act on it.”

Initially, the new concessionaire was expected to be in place by May. However, the state government has now extended the last date for financial bids till June 7.

HMRL managing director NVS Reddy said the bidders had sought more time to submit financial bids as they were yet to complete traffic potential studies and financial modeling among others.

“There would not be any further extension of the due date,” he said in a release.

The other consortia now include Transstroy-OJSC Transstroy (Russia)-CR18G (China)-BEML; Reliance Infra-Reliance Infocomm; Lanco Infra-OHL Concesiones (Spain); Essar-Leighton (Australia)-Gayatri-VNR; Soma-Strabag AG (Austria) and Larsen & Toubro.

Maytas Infra, which had earlier bagged the project on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis, failed to achieve financial closure. This led the state government to call for fresh bids.

Those applying for financial bids this time would have to pay Rs 240 crore as bank guarantee against the Rs 60-crore specified last time. Also, the winning bidder would have to provide Rs 320 crore as performance guarantee, three per cent of the project cost compared with two per cent last time.